Clare Moriarty, Post-Doctoral Researcher at Trinity College Dublin joined Shane Coleman on Newstalk Breakfast to share her experience of a miscarriage. 

Ms Moriarty believes that the loss of a pregnancy needs more compassion as women who have gone through such trauma are vulnerable in the aftermath.

“I think I had a typical experience of pregnancy loss. I had my early scans and then when I went in for the 12 week one, the sonogram didn’t register a heartbeat," she says.

“I wanted surgery as soon as possible, I just wanted to be pregnant again.

“I felt very lucky to get surgery when I did, there was talk of maybe having to wait until the following week, which would have been very distressing, so there are definitely some constraints around the hospitals with how quick they can get you in."

Miscarriage and pregnancy loss

 Ms Moriarty believes that as a result of a lack of facilities and funding, hospitals are restricted in the services they can provide. 

“You can have the best people in the world doing good jobs, but if they don’t have the facilities and the structures to let their work flourish, they’re very constrained in what they can do”, she says.

She described how the environment in the hospital was not reflective of the traumatic surgery she underwent. 

“After I had the surgery, I could hear babies crying. I think the compassionate thing to do is to have a system designed to keep a bit of space between people having this difficult experience versus the kind of normal version” she believes. 

Ms Moriarty would like to see effective change to the system’s approach to pregnancy loss and the support services in place for women. 

“You hear a lot of discussion now about the fertility rates dropping but these kinds of things are under-resourced. From the point of view of policy, there’s no miscarriage leave, there’s little research done into early pregnancy loss. 

“What’s needed is proper leave policy, the current system asks women to just get a medical note from their doctor and reduces the complex life phenomenon down to just your medical healing.

“I believe there’s been a draft bill [addressing the issue] since 2021 and it keeps being delayed because people are worried about the impact on businesses and the impact on economic issues.

"But I can’t even see the economic argument insofar as if you’re entitled to a medical note for sick leave, what further harm is it doing by treating it as the complex life event that it is?”

Ms Moriarty re-iterates that it is a very individual journey, as experiencing grief comes in various guises. 

“I think people are entitled to handle it however they want, it is a tragedy. I know people where it would have been the case that I was at their granny’s funerals and I never knew that they lost a pregnancy”, she says.